Dear reader, today was really really tough for a little guy like me. It began with a comedy of errors at our hotel where the restaurant was being renovated (we were not notified during booking or informed when we arrived) and we walked to another hotel nearby for an admittedly delicious lunch. Then as I went to board the airport shuttle a woman’s husband was late and we waited for him for almost 10 minutes as the driver refused to load their [no joke] 8 bags. I arrived at the airport the proper 3 hours early and my actual airport experience was pretty much perfect. I found people I knew before even making it to the ticket counter and got my dinner/snacks paid for by the university. Once we boarded the 7 hour overnight flight the real reason for my paragraph of relentless complaining becomes clear. I’ve never been so overstimulated in such a quiet place. I’m in the window seat which is typically perfect, but there’s one of those metal bars on the ground and I can’t put down my right foot. The person in front of me put their seat all the way back so I can’t put my head on the tray table or get into my under-seat bag either and there’s this old woman behind me reading on her ipad set to the brightest it’ll go (all lights are off on the plane). It’s slightly too warm and the person sitting next to me is fully touching me thigh to thigh (not her fault these seats are pretty tiny). The inflight wifi is completely down but even if it isn’t it only includes texting not access to the internet or streaming capabilities. I tried to watch a movie on the screen instead but I don’t have headphones that connect and the ones they gave me are both too big and only have sound in one ear. I know this is super first world problems but i’m having a really hard time with this one. Did I mention i’m having stomach cramps? Oh god I think someone just started snoring in the row behind me… I fear for their safety if I find out who it is. Once we finally arrived in the heat-wave ridden city (it was 98 degrees and direct sun) our group of 10 navigated the metro to the Cité internationale universitaire de Paris where we are staying for the duration of our class. The rooms are actually very nice but the heat kept me from appreciating that until I cooled off via cold shower. I resisted the urge to sleep after not getting a wink on the plane and finally passed out around 9:30pm Paris time.
On our second "real" day of class we took a walk through the Latin Quarter, one of the oldest districts in Paris on the left bank of the Seine. It is interestingly named after the Latin language which was taught in the Middle Ages at many schools in the district (I previously assumed it was like the Latin quarter of NOLA). We would have seen the The Saint-Michel fountain but it is currently being restored at various workshops around Paris. The partition blovking the area off was covered in information in both French and English discussing the fountain's history and the ongoing preservation efforts which for me formed an even more interesting lesson in historic preservation in a big city than seeing the fountain itself. After a stop at a wonderful and eclectically decorated creperie we headed to the Musee de Cluny, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, which was very high on my list of museums to visit. It is half Roman baths and half medieval castle making for a slightly odd looking but mostly very impressive exterior. All that remains of the Roman portion is the frigidarium where guests would cool themselves after a heated bath, which is still a massive room with vaulted ceilings and original Roman masonry. The medieval portion was what I was most excited about and it didn't let me down. The current mansion was built from 1485 by Jacques d'Amboise, Abbot of Cluny but underwent restoration in the 19th century. The collection is mostly religious artifacts (which tracks for the time period) with a pleasant addition of a modern art exhibition seamlessly blended with the medieval objects. It's called "Summoning the Chimeras. Medieval Heritage in Contemporary Art" and is part of the program "Berserk & Pyrrhia, Contemporary and Medieval Art" presented by the Frac Île-de-France. Some of my favorite pieces in the collection were painted cards inspired by MAGIC the Gathering but depicting themes related to the medieval artifact they were displayed alongside. I encourage you to look through the linked journal because its pretty freaking cool in my opinion as someone who is nerdy about this kind of stuff. The most famous collection at the Cluny is "The Lady and the Unicorn," a series of iconic medieval tapestries that were admittedly breathtaking. I learned that the tapestries represent each of the senses and the museum included pamphlets about the preservation/restoration of them over the years in their collection. I ended my day at a delicious Moroccan street food restaurant my friend Laurie found. I ate a giant bowl of lamb couscous and brushed up on my restaurant related French for a great end to the day.
The Paris opera house is everything I wanted versailles to be. The grand architecture, the mirrors, and the ability to walk around without hundreds of people playing bumper cars with their bodies (definitely my personal preference). The front entrance is closed for restoration so the effect of walking in to the main staircase is lost but the spectacle is not. The architects who designed the opera house wanted the guests to be a part of the theater as much as the actors and sets and they definitely accomplished that in my opinion. The building has mosaic floors throughout in a mix of geometric and floral patterns that hit the right balance of opulent and “inconspicuous” so they don’t draw attention away from other features. The theater itself has a beautifully painted ceiling that was redone in 1964 by artist Marc Chagall. His art is brightly colored and features human figures alongside parisian landmarks and musical instruments. The modern style used in the fresco was (and still is) a point of contention but it took my breath away and was much more memorable than it would have been if he had painted in the same classical style as the other ceilings in the building. Possibly the best part though is that the “redesign” isn’t permanent! It was done on panels assembled atop the original art created in 1872 by Jules-Eugène Lenepveu. In addition to the opera house we also stopped by the unassuming La Madeleine church. A catholic church designed to look like a greek pantheon from the outside. It has a fully columned facade with proper corinthians and everything but has always been a catholic church. Inside was incredibly beautiful, comparable to Notre Dame though notably much smaller. I was blown away by the atmosphere the interior of these churches have, with their vaulted ceilings, curated alters, candles, stained glass and other features I may compile and write about in a later entry. La Madeleine made me feel all the emotions that I believe a place of worship should. It felt reverent and full of life despite being relatively empty and completely silent. As a person who has struggled with my personal faith in the past this place brought me comfort and i’d rank it very high compared to all the churches I’ve seen so far (at least on the inside.)
In the three weeks I’ve had so far to wander around Paris I’ve been trying to pay attention to every nook and cranny of every street, including graffiti and street art. It’s been really cool to see famous art in museums around the city only to emerge to even more creations by the people who roam the Paris streets. Many of the traditional graffiti and tagging would look familiar to anyone who has lived in a city of any size, but there are so many unique pieces of art and innovative techniques to integrate them that I felt I had to share with you all. The art I noticed first was what I’ve taken to calling “mosaic graffiti”. Tiny mosaic tiles stuck to the sides of buildings depicting a range of subjects from tiny game characters or pixel portraits of Josephine Baker. There’s an artist by the name of Invader who seems to have begun this tile tagging trend around 1998. He began the invasion (his words) with mosaics of the iconic 8bit characters from Space Invaders but has since branched out to other characters and cities around the world. My favorite street art discovery just may be a sign from above. I first saw the angel on a wall on the Rue des Pyramides near the Jardin de Tuileries. I’ll never know what really drove me to stop and take a ton of pictures but I was charmed by this piece of art done on a random shop wall with thin strokes of white chalk. The work was dated and signed but the signature was illegible so I left it at that. The next day on our class excursion to Le Bonne Marche mall, we stopped in on an expensive housewares store where I saw her once more. She was blue this time, and much smaller, taking up residence on a teacup. I gasped and made all my friends crowd around as I tried to find out if the two were connected. The tea set was a collaboration between fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and earthenware manufacturer GIEN. Jean-Charles, a Parisian native has an extensive social media presence of his art and designs including the chalk angles who he has been placing all around Paris since 1996. He uses only white chalk on surfaces and marker on poster paper and said in a post “I've always had this equipment with me for 20 years, my jacket pockets have suffered from it, I've drawn thousands of angels, which the bad weather has washed away, I'll draw more and more and more.” Dear reader, should I have bought the teacup? I’m also including my second favorite graffiti discovery, this little dude who I saw all over Les Halles and strangely on a trashcan by the Seine. Any information highly appreciated as google has been majorly unhelpful.
I'd like to begin this entry with a brief and abridged history of the Musee d'Orsay as is my right as a HISP student. The museum began as a train station, a fact that is clear from both the outside and inside, and only became the massive art museum we know in 1986. It served as the terminus for the Oreans Railway Company remnants of which you can see in the repeating pattern of "PO" for Paris-Orleans that remains on the facade. In the same vein as many famous French buildings, the design was put to contest, and won by architect Victor LaLoux. The station and its hotel, built in two years, were built specially for the 1900s Worlds Fair. The station has a metal structure that Laloux masked with a stone facade to harmonize with the nearby Louvre. It was threatened with demolition throughout the 60s-70s after it fell completely out of use, but faced a renewed historic interest by the French Museums Dictorate at the end of the decade.
Moving on to the actual art, my favorite exhibition was one from an artist I had never heard of. The People of the North, by Norwegian artist Christian Krohg which is on display until July 27th was a pleasant suprise that I almost missed because the museum was rapidly closing. Krohg was a writer and journalist who wanted to depict the Scandanavian people's condition with empathy and highlight his humanist commitment. His paintings of windswept sailors on stormy seas are juxtaposed by emotional portraits of mothers with their children and sobering images of poverty. His style is visually similar to Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet and other impressionists but the subjects and emotion set him apart for me. Each of his paintings steered my emotions in a new way and I found myself drawn to every corner of the room. His depictions of women (even sex-workers) is empathetic, emotional, and raw in a way I've learned not to expect from male artists of the past. Krohg's works blew me away (swept me out to sea?) and each one felt so much like its own completely flesh out world. I'm so glad I persevered through the overcrowded impressionist galleries of the museum and visited the temporary exhibition halls to see it. Other notable favorites included Child Profile and Still Life Study by Louis Anquetin, The Child with the Cat by Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Olympia by Manet (photos with caption included).
I’ll admit it, I’ve been obsessed with a corny 2000s BBC re-imagining of Arthurian Legend since I was 14, and I totally begged my friends to visit the set while in France. To possibly help my case, the castle Merlin was filmed at was redesigned/restored by French architect Eugene Violett-le-Duc whose name comes up in this class quite a lot. Chateau de Pierrefonds is in Northern France between Villers-Cotterêts and Compiègne, and it somehow managed to surpass expectations both in architecture and emotional value to me specifically. A castle was originally built on this site in the 12th century but besieged and destroyed by troops sent by Cardinal Richelieu in March 1617, only to sit as a ruin until the 19th century restoration. Le-Duc did to Pierrefonds what he did to many of his projects and restored it to “what it should have been” rather than meticulously following the castle’s history, which led to charmingly bizarre polychrome rooms and a menagerie of fantastical statues that entertained our group to no end. While I was giddy to see so many locations from a TV show that means so much to me, the rooms I didn’t recognize also captured my heart. Highlights from these rooms include a beautiful chapel with stained glass, a multicolor room with squirrels carved on the banister and striped porcupines painted on all the walls, and a room meant to display a private collection of Napoleon III’s armour but now has 9 full color statues of “Valiant ladies”. Walking through the castle and grounds we laughed and marveled in equal measure, seeing the large salamander gutters spitting out rainwater and bizarre animalien statues of creatures inspired by marginalia. Learning about the historical background that ties into historic preservation while experiencing a total fangirl moment was such an incredible experience to check off my bucket list alongside my wonderful friends. It was a day that reminded me that it isn’t silly to love things, and that passion is truly contagious. I have full confidence that even my non Merlin-brainwashed friends would recommend a day-visit to Pierrefonds without me having to threaten them at all! Speaking of: two of them have posted polls/quizzes that will let you see more of the statues around the castle that made us laugh so definitely check out Laurie and Ellie’s blogs to fill those out. I guess my takeaway is that castles are awesome, history is awesome, weird animals are awesome, and my 4 year hyperfixation on Merlin is awesome too!